


everything will glow for you

by theatrythms



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bonding, Crest System, Discussions of succession, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Post Miklan Mission, Pre-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23352937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatrythms/pseuds/theatrythms
Summary: The first person Sylvain has met who’s Crest couldn’t save them, two sacred social laws of Faerghus coming to a head in the middle of Annette’s inheritance.Or; Sylvain finds out that Annette will never be the Baroness of Dominic.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 57





	everything will glow for you

**Author's Note:**

> this is a huge headcanon !!!! if theres anything in three houses that says anything different , that doesnt matter for this !! if there is something contradictory in game abt annette becoming the baroness, id love to hear it ! i hope u like it ! title is from the love club by lorde ! im so nervous abt sylvain's characterization lmao hes such a good character but so tricky to write !!!

The last person Sylvain thought would cry for Miklan is Annette, huddled in the alley next to the greenhouses, just at the foot of the stairs to the second floor dormitories. She’s surrounded by a swath of kittens, their small noses and paws reaching for her, their loud mewls and meows drowning out the sound of her hiccups.

In the early morning, the dawn is dull and grey, casting a thin filter over Garreg Mach. Sylvain has been out of his room each morning as early as acceptable, greeting the knights coming off of their patrol with an easy wave. He’s done this every day since the mission, every day since he returned from Gautier. He’s watched six sunsets and seven sunrises, as if each second spent out of his room is a gift from the Goddess herself.

Not so much, when confronted with a crying classmate.

“Annette?” Sylvain asks, hesitantly, rounding the corner, taking a tentative step down the last set of stairs. “Are you… alright?”

Annette looks up, rubbing one blearly blue eye with her fist, her lips pursed. Her face is red and blotchy, round cheeks inflamed. “Oh! Sylvain! It’s you!” Annette says, hunkering down into her hiding space a little deeper, a strange shyness to her. “Don’t mind me! I’ll be out of your hair in a moment!” Annette is already a small girl, a small person, with enough personality for Sylvain to forget he has a tendency to tower over her, even when she’s standing at full height, and even more so when she’s on the ground.

“Annette that’s not what I meant.” Bending his knees, Sylvain gets to her level, crossing his legs as cautiously as he can, given the flock of strays gathered around his classmate. “You’re crying in an alleyway while feeding cats. Is something wrong?”

Annette smiles weakly, wiping at her eyes before the tears start again, brushing him off with her free hand. “Gosh, it’s nothing I promise, I’m just being silly.”

“It’s not silly if it’s making you cry.” Sylvain says, cocking his head. Interactions with crying girls normally go differently, following a routine, and Sylvain would follow the right steps until he could politely duck out of the conversation, or he’d given the girl a reason to storm off away from him.

Seeing Annette cry doesn’t sate the monster growling in his chest, doesn’t pacify whatever urge he gets when girls are blinking tears out of their eyelashes because he’s said something too harsh, or dropped someone too suddenly. Sitting with a teary Annette makes his whole chest feel heavy, wondering what Earth-ending crisis has befallen the sweetest person in the Blue Lions that made her cry. He’s seen Mercedes pull arrows out of her legs and shoulder, or repaired deep slashing cuts from mercenaries, but she’s always managed to grit her teeth about it, more care and decorum than Felix at least, who gets snappy and grabby and tries to push Mercedes away, out of her range of healing.

“I don’t want to bother you with it.” Annette sighs, tucking her knees into her chest. She’s still in her sleepwear, he can tell, the woolen pants and large dressing gown swamping her, and he hopes it’s keeping her warm. “I don’t want to… upset you too.” She continues, in a very quiet, very still voice.

“Annette,” Sylvain says, gently laying his hand on her shoulder, cautious of scaring her off. “I’m not leaving until you’re smiling again, okay? And sometimes, I’ve heard, problems are better solved when they're halved.”

He flashes a bright smile at her, hoping she hasn’t caught onto the line he’s pulled. This is unchartered territory, as dreadful as that sounds, to sit and comfort a young woman and not have an underlying ulterior motive, or be at the very heart of the pain. Annette looks up at him, the inside of her lip chewed and red, as if she’s weighing carefully if she should tell him.

Sylvain tries not to make this about how much Annette trusts him, but Sylvain can’t help but make it about it. She’s relied on him enough times on the battlefield to trust him to have her back, or give her the range to make some really nasty battalion maneuvers, but he can’t help but remember their conversation from before Miklan’s mission, where Annette’s doubt had came with a sharp sting he hadn’t expected.

“Are you sure you, Sylvain?” She asks, one last time, and Sylvain can’t help but wonder how often she confides in people, if she does at all. “I really don’t want to upset you.”

Pulling another cheesy line from his repertoire, Sylvain brings his finger to his heart, lazily crossing over it. “There. Cross my heart. I’m all ears, Annie.”

If the nickname was too far, Annette doesn’t say anything, except sink her chin further onto her knees, her face suddenly very squished. Sylvain fights a small laugh, trying not to throw her off, and he listens, really and truly, hoping he can help in some way.

“The last mission has just got me thinking, I guess. I mean, I know I’m not the only one of course, and I really am truly, so sorry for what happened to you, Sylvain, I really really am.” Annette rambles first, staring down at the space between them, her hands idly slipping across the kittens’ backs and behind their ears. Sylvain feels his breath catch, at the strange realisation, that Annette was crying for Miklan, crying for him, in a way. She’d cried for Lonato, he remembers, spending hours in the Cathedral with Ashe, or at meals with him, moving away from her desk with Mercedes to sit with him, and Sylvain isn’t sure if he can handle a week with Annette’s doting, careful, well-intentioned, but the last thing he needs right now.

He’s about to speak, until Annette sucks in a great breath, and continues on.

“And this is probably so selfish of me to think like this, considering everything, considering _everything,_ ” She repeats, before more tears start to slide down her cheeks, staining the knee of her trousers. “But it’s just made me feel more grateful to my uncle, and all the care he’s given me. Is that selfish to feel like that?”

With a tilt of his head, Sylvain looks squarely at Annette, confused at where she’s coming from. “Um, I don’t think that’s selfish. I’m not even sure why you’d think that, if I’m perfectly honest.” It’s the most polite way to tell Annette he doesn’t deserve her tears, that Miklan can’t do anymore hurt where he is now, that he himself has already left that mission behind him.

Annette’s face shifts through three different emotions, cycling through a deeper, more painful expression of sadness, before confusion, and a resounding look of realisation.

“You don’t know?” She says instead, cocking her head. She sniffles once, twice, brows furrowed.

Now it’s Sylvain’s turn to be confused, but he’s less subtle about it. “Don’t know what?”

“Sylvain, I’m,” She starts, before pausing, twisting her lips as she thinks of something to say. Sylvain unconsciously leans forward, waiting for Annette to speak. “You know that my Uncle is the Baron of Dominic, right?” She asks a simple question, one Sylvain can answer.

“Yeah, out near Gaspard territory, right?”

Annette nods, before she shifts her legs so their crossed, her elbows braced on her knees, allowing her fingers to steeple together under her chin. “And you know that after the Tragedy of Duscur, my father, Sir Gustave Eddie Dominic, renounced his claim to Dominic.”

Sylvain knew most of that, mostly in the abstract, vague details, but it’s common knowledge, more or less, that the incident in Duscur touched most powerful Houses in Faerghus individually, too many for him to keep account of. Sylvain nods.

Annette takes another breath, fiddling with the cuffs of her nightgown, a slight chill to her shoulders. Her eyes have dried, at least, no longer pooling with tears. “Well, when he stepped down, that basically disinherited me from the Dominic line of succession.” She takes another breath, this time meeting Sylvain’s eyes, a small smile on her lips. “Like Miklan, I was disowned. And I was upset because, really, my uncle has no obligation to look after myself or my mother, but he does anyway, and he sent me to the School of Sorcery so I could make a better future for myself.” Annette pauses to tuck one of her loose strands of hair behind her ear, her voice dropping in volume. “But until this mission… I’ve never really thought about the other way my life could’ve gone, if he didn’t step in and take care of me, and that made me really sad all of a sudden.”

Sylvain can’t find the words, until they're the wrong ones to say.

Her laugh is nervous, self-conscious even. “Oh jeez, I didn’t mean to ramble like that-”

“But you have a Crest?!” Sylvain says instead, almost flinching away from her.

Annette looks confused again, her brows furrowing, her face perplexed. “And?”

“That makes you the heir of Dominic. The way I’m the heir of Gautier.” He flushes, strangely irate. “Wouldn’t that, I don’t know, protect you from being cast out?”

Annette never said a thing, never made any indication that her attendance in Garreg Mach meant anything else other than being a noble citizen getting a noble education, that her Crest meant something asides from the power and status and privilege she was yet to grow into. He remembers the first time seeing the Crest of Dominic flare and glow on the battlefield, the rush of air blowing his hair back, making his eyes water, even at a distance.

“Sure, that would be the case if I was the sole person in House Dominic with a Crest, but I’m not.” She explains, more gently than Sylvain thinks he deserves. “My twelve year old cousin has a crest and just started at the School of Sorcery. _He’ll_ be the Baron someday, not me.”

“And you will?” Sylvain says, his voice taking an almost desperate edge to it. He can’t imagine in five, or ten years, having to hunt down a crew of bandits led by a scorned former heiress, House Dominic’s Relic stolen from them, only this time Annette would be safe, safe from turning into whatever creature claimed his brother, as the Relic would answer her the way the Lance of Ruin listens to Sylvain, the humming weapon home in his grip, 

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” Annette says, her bright smile worming its way back onto her face. “But I’m a big fan of studying. Academia seems like a good fit, and I’ve been told by Hanneman and a few of my lecturers from Fhirdiad that I’d make a good teacher someday.”

Annette with a class of students, all eager to learn. Annette back in Garreg Mach, if the Professor isn’t still kicking around, leading the Blue Lions. Annette, disowned, but happy, teaching children with and without Crests the art of magic. The mental image calms Sylvain for a second, quells the anger burning in his chest. Just when he’s begun to grasp how the Crest System works, how to move around it and be at peace with it, there’s another curveball, another restriction and rule he can’t cross, another fine line he was never warned about.

This is a crack in the Faerghus doctrine.

“And you’re not upset? Not upset about being passed over?” He asks, his words uncertain. “I mean, not that you wouldn’t be a great teacher, because honestly, I know you will, but just, it seems a little harsh, to punish you just because your father walked out.”

His words are crass and he knows it, and Annette sends him the saddest smile he’s ever seen before. Her knees roll back to her chin, another wave of tears threatening to fall, her cheek resting on her legs as her arms curl around her. “I’d rather have my father back, to be perfectly honest with you.”

(That’s how Sylvain had felt, holding the Lance of Ruin, the weapon seemingly alive to his touch. He hated Miklan, hated him for the pain he’d put him through, but he’d wished the Relic didn’t matter as much, that things could've been different, that he wasn't the one who had to kill his brother, wishing that the Lance could've been lost to the beast it created.)

Over the pond, and the rising stone walls of Garreg Mach, the sun had broken through the dreary clouds, working its way into the morning sky. Breakfast is served soon, the rest of the Monastery pulling together for another day.

Another day that Miklan will be dead, and Sylvain will be the heir.

Another day where Annette will be the disowned heir of Dominic. The first person Sylvain has met who’s Crest couldn’t save them, two sacred social laws of Faerghus coming to a head in the middle of Annette’s inheritance.

“Say, Annette, do you want to get some breakfast with me?” Sylvain asks, hoping this’ll take the sadness away. He’s dealt enough with Felix and Lord Rodrigue, and Ingrid and Count Galatea, and himself and his own father, to understand the heart of Annette’s sadness, and know that it’s a problem without an easy solution. “Maybe you can tell me a bit about your cousin? I don’t think I’ve ever met him before.”

Annette’s smile brightens, pulling her face out of her knees. “I think you’d get along with Douglas! He’s sweet, really!”

(Sylvain probably would. Second-born children who ascended to the heir of the House, all thanks to the flimsy strings of fate and tradition.)

Sylvain can’t help but laugh, helping Annette to her feet. “Your cousin's name is Douglas Dominic?”

Annette flushes, tilting her chin upward. “You can’t laugh at anything! You have a best friend called Felix Fraldarius!”

Around them, Garreg Mach rouses itself, into a week that will be like the one before it.

But Sylvain's perspective has shifted once again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u very much for reading !!


End file.
